


Stay With Me

by javajunkie



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2465216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/javajunkie/pseuds/javajunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I needed to see you."</p>
<p>Oliver shows up at Felicity's townhouse following his talk with Diggle in the foundry.  3.02 missing scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay With Me

            When she gets home from Queen Consolidated she sees him. He’s sitting on the front steps of her townhouse, elbows resting on his knees and head turned to the side. He stands when he sees her, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket.  His jaw is tense and shoulders set.  She knows this look – she’s seen it hundreds of times – but when she kills the engine and steps out of the car, steeling herself for whatever trite scene they are about to play out, the change in his demeanor surprises her. He steps forward, hands still shoved deep in the jacket pockets, and she realizes that she’s read him all wrong.

            “Oliver?” she asks hesitantly, stepping forward.

            “Can I come in?” he asks. 

            “Yeah. Of course, let me just…” she reaches down in her purse, grabbing for her keys.  It takes her a few seconds, her keys predictably eluding her, but when she finds them she opens the door, beckoning for him to follow.

            He walks in, quietly taking stock of her home.  Despite all the time he’s known her, he’s never been to her townhouse.  He likes it immediately. He can see her in the posters on the wall and bright pillows on the couch.  There’s a yoga mat set in the middle of the living room; it’s bubble gum pink.

            “Do you want a drink or something?” Felicity asks, stepping toward the kitchen. She drops her purse on the kitchen table as she passes.  “I have tea. Only chamomile. But I have coffee. And bottled water.” She considers that for a moment. “Actually, scratch that. I drank the last one this morning. I have tap water.”

            “I’m fine,” Oliver says.

            “Okay.” She pauses, waiting for him to say something, and when he doesn’t she tentatively asks, “Oliver, why are you here?”

            “I needed to see you,” he says.  His voice is soft, guarded.

            She nods, a jerk reaction, and steps toward him.  He turns away, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to leave, avoid whatever emotional scene they were about to encounter, but then he walks to the couch and sits down.  She follows and sits beside him, moving a blue and white checkered pillow that she’d sat on.

            “I was sitting in the foundry,” Oliver begins, his gaze trained on the pink yoga mat. “Trying to figure out what to do next. How to find Sara’s killer. But I couldn’t focus. I kept thinking about Sara and everything we’d gone through together.  And then everything we went through after.”  He curls his hands into tight fists, fingernails digging into his palms. “After all of that, she deserved better. She deserved more than three arrows in her chest.  She deserved a future. And a life.  A real life, because after what we went through…” he trails off, shaking his head.  His hands relax on his knees, like he’s given up on the anger, and he finishes with, “She deserved better.”

            “She did,” Felicity agrees softly.

            “And I found myself thinking again, for I don’t even know the number of times, about how I wished I hadn’t taken her on the Gambit with me. That I hadn’t made the stupid decision that changed her life forever.”

            “It’s not your fault,” Felicity says.  A guilt spiral was the last thing Oliver needed now.  “It was her choice to come with you.”

            “Her choice,” he returns bitterly, shaking his head.  “That’s the thing.  People around me keep making choices.  Choices with me. For me.  And they always get hurt.  Sara. My mother.  You.”

            Felicity is surprised to hear him bring up Moira.  He rarely talked about his mother.  It was one of those losses they didn’t discuss.  The impact too significant.

            “Oliver, you can’t blame yourself for other people’s choices. I can’t speak for your mother or Sara, but I made mine with a clear mind, and if given another chance, I would make the same decisions every time.”

            “I don’t want to be alone,” he says, his entire body rigid with tension. She wants to touch him, to feel him relax under her fingertips, but something holds her back. Maybe it’s what happened at the hospital, or how she could sense the ‘but’ following his admission, but she stays in her place, hands clasped on her lap. 

“But I don’t know how to do that and not hurt people.  Because the people around me get hurt.  No matter what I do – how I try to protect them – they end up on that table in the foundry, paying the price for being close to me.”

“We all know the risks, Oliver.  We live and breath them, but we accept them, anyway.”

“Why? Why would you risk your life for me?”

“Because you’re worth it,” she says.  “Even when you’re being frustratingly difficult – which is a lot of the time – you’re still worth it.”  She pauses, words pressing at her tongue.  She can’t say them. Not after everything that has happened. But then maybe that is exactly why she should say them.  Why she has to.

“Because we love you,” she finally says.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, the words hanging between them.  Her admission isn’t exactly a surprise.  Of course she loves him.  Just like he loves her.  It’s one of those unspoken things.  Something he knows as surely as his own heartbeat.  But still, he feels a sense of desperation grip him at her words because he loves her, God he loves her, and all he wants to do is bury his face in her hair, lose himself in her and them and forget everything else.

But he’s too afraid of what comes next.  He’s afraid of letting her in and then losing her.  Of hovering over her body on that metal table, saying goodbye to the one person he can’t imagine living without.  Because somewhere between that red pen and now she’d become more than necessary – she’d become indispensable.  Something without which he didn’t know how to exist.

She scoots closer to him, and while he feels the instinct to pull away, to put distance between them, he stays rooted on the couch.   He watches her as she brings her hands up to his face.  He doesn’t pull from her touch, if anything he leans into it. He didn’t realize how much he craved the comfort of her touch until it was there and he closes his eyes briefly, reveling in it.

“You are not alone,” she murmurs.  When he opens his eyes he sees the earnestness of her gaze. “You will never be alone.”

Without another word she scoots herself closer and wraps her arms around him.  She doesn’t ask for permission, but she doesn’t need it. He winds his arms around her waist, pressing his face into the curve of her neck.  She smells like vanilla and cinnamon. 

He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until she’s rubbing his back, gently murmuring in his ear.   It feels good to finally let go. It still hurts and he doubts that pain will ever fully go away – just like it hasn’t for Tommy or his mother – but there is something freeing about breaking down.  He spends so much of his time trying to maintain control. He doesn’t know how long he cries, but she’s with him the entire time.  When he’s done she takes his hand and stands, leading him to her bedroom.

“You need to sleep,” she tells him.

“I can go back to the foundry,” he says, feeling shame at having broken down so entirely in front of her. He was supposed to be the strong one.

“Do you want to go back to the foundry?” she asks him.

“No,” he admits.

“Good, then it’s decided. You’ll stay here. For as long as you need.”

“I can’t do that,” he says, shaking his head.  Things are still unsettled between them, and being constantly around each other wouldn’t help.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“Don’t do this,” Felicity says in a low voice, stepping toward him.  “Don’t push me away.”

            “I need to be focused.  Especially after what happened.”

            “And I’m a distraction?”

            “Yes!” he says, more loudly than he intended. He sees her physically recoil. “Of course you are. When you are in a room, you are all I can think about.  You are all I can see. And when you’re not in the room, I’m still thinking about you.  I’ve lost entire afternoons thinking about you, Felicity.  Thinking about your smile and the way your voice sounds when you say my name.  Of course you’re a distraction.”

            “So, that’s it?  I’m a distraction and you push me away? Hope it goes away?”

            He shakes his head.  “It won’t go away. I don’t want it to go away.”

            She stares at him.  “What do you want, then?”

            He rubs at his eyes wearily.  “I want…I want to be able to take you on a date and not worry about the restaurant being blown up.  I want to kiss you in public. To hold your hand and slide my arm around your waist.  I want you to be the last person I see before I go to bed, and the first person when I wake up. I want you.  But-“

            “No,” she says forcefully, stepping toward him.  “No buts.”

            “Felicity-“

            She cuts him off with her mouth against his, half convinced he’ll push her away and hoping against all odds that he won’t.  She lingers at his mouth for a moment, waiting for him to kiss her back. When he doesn’t she pulls back, feeling the familiar pang in her chest.  This is it.  She’s done. She can’t keep reaching out to him when all he does is push her away.  It’s not fair.  She told him she wanted more out of her life, and she does.  She wants someone who will kiss her back.

            And then, just as she’s about to turn away from him, he reaches down and pulls her mouth to his again.  The kiss begins slow but then she threads her fingers in his hair, pulling his mouth harder down against her own.  This moment has been in the works for over a year, and they don’t waste any time. They move back toward her bed, and when the back of her knees hit the mattress she sits down. Oliver pulls her shirt over her head then his goes and she’s working on his belt. 

            She scoots back on the bed and he follows, finding his place between her legs. He kisses her neck, tongue dragging along her skin.  She feels him pressing against her thigh and she wriggles a bit, sighing when he nips at her neck. She could stay this way forever, pressed against him with his mouth on her skin.  She can’t think of anywhere she’d rather be.

            For all the rushing of before, they make love slowly.  Oliver’s hands move over her body achingly slow, as if he’s trying to map the curves of her body with his touch.  When they’re both spent she lays almost on top of him, not wanting to lose the closeness she’d felt with him only minutes earlier. He’s holding her hand, drawing lazy circles on her palm with his thumb. 

            “I love you,” he says, kissing her hand.  

She closes her eyes, listening to the steady beat of his heart.  “I know.”

His chest rumbles beneath her cheek as he chuckles.  “You do?”

She tilts her head up to look at him, smiling softly.  “Yes, I do.”

“I think Sara knew, too,” he says after a moment.  “She said something to me.  Before. She said that we need people in our lives who don’t wear masks.  I think she was talking about you.”

Felicity presses a kiss to his chest.  “I have never worn a mask. Actually, hold on. I did once.  Masquerade party.  Sophomore year of college.”

“They had masquerade parties at MIT?”

She nods. “It was a frat party. I don’t have many memories from the party, but the ones I do have involve a lot of puking in bathrooms.”

He laughs. “So, a night to forget, huh?”

“You could say that.”

His mouth ghosts over her hair and she thinks of earlier that day, where she’d been.

“Considering what just happened, I probably should tell you that I took a job with Queen Consolidated earlier today,” she murmurs, holding her breath as she waits for a response.

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell me you’re not Ray Palmer’s executive assistance.”

“Hell no. Being yours was bad enough.” He grins at that. “I’m heading up the IT department.”

“I think that’s great.”

She looks up at him. “You do?”

“You’re too good for Tech Village.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “I am.”

“So, I’m happy for you.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Of course, if Ray Palmer tries to get too close to you…”

“I’ll tell him that I’m taken,” she finishes decisively.

He likes the sound of that.

So does she.


End file.
